USED COW SALESMAN
Buy land. They ain’t making any more of the stuff.
– Will Rogers
The population of Inverness County had been going down since they could remember. So of course they were noticed. You heard about them on the church steps, at the hairdresser’s and the post office. And then maybe you saw one yourself. A pregnant girl in muddy rubber boots at the Co-op. A young fellow with a ponytail setting up a mailbox in front of a long-abandoned farmhouse. Then one day there they were for real, driving up your lane, drinking tea in your kitchen, wanting to be your best friend: The New People.
They bought land in all the miserable places that sensible people had fled: grim mountaintops with bad roads and blackflies; lonely valleys with no electricity or running water. But that was fine with them. They thought it was good fun to cook on a fire and haul water and use an outhouse. They wanted to do things the hard way. Their lifestyle necessitated a surprising number of items. A hand-pump maybe, or a goat. A Jersey cow, after the goat ate the newly planted plum tree. A load of old barn boards or hay or manure. Second-hand everything. But there was a man, a kind of used cow salesman, agricultural representative and wise uncle all rolled up into one wiry package. His telephone number (good luck finding it in the phone book, where he was still listed under his dead grandfather’s name) was scribbled on the back of muddy seed packets and pogey envelopes, passed from one hippie hand to another. Which is how he got to know so many of them. Although the truth was he sought them out. Bumped up all the muddy unimproved roads and rutted driveways. Saw all the colours of their dreams. And although their situations were sometimes comical, he never laughed at them. Not even with Annabel. The most he might say was:
‘Picked up a young fellow hitchhiking. He had two bags of groceries and a box of Pampers.’
‘Pampers,’ Annabel said.
‘They’re in Smithville, at Johnny Hector’s old place.’
‘Red Joseph’s?’
‘Yep.’
‘That house burned to the ground.’
‘He’s going to build another one. With straw. He showed me this book he has. You use straw bales and cement, some darned thing. Don’t know where he’s going to get straw around here …’ The wheels turning in his head.
‘Where are they staying?’
‘Tarpaper shack about the size of the woodshed. Two kids in there. Don’t even have an outhouse as far as I can tell.’
Annabel would press her lips together and shake her head.
‘As happy as clams!’
‘Go figure.’
‘The girl made us some tea and we drank it outside, sitting on stumps. Just like camping.’ (Curly had never gone camping.) He didn’t tell his wife that the baby woke while they were sitting beside the door of the little shack drinking the smoky tea. That the blonde girl had gone inside to fetch him. That upon her return she sat in the only chair they had – an aluminum lawn chair missing some of its faded nylon webbing – lifted her t-shirt to suckle the infant and in so doing had revealed the most beautiful breast Curly had ever seen in the flesh, round and firm and brown –
‘How old are the children?’
‘One’s about two, the other can’t be more than a couple of months.’
‘If you’re going to go by their place,’ Annabel would say a week later, ‘the ones building a house in Smithville? Rhonda was taking this to the Opportunity Shop’ – and she’d give Curly a garbage bag full of second-hand baby clothes and a pile of used women’s magazines for the poor girl to read.
THE STALWART LAUCHIE AND STELLA
The eighth day of a cold snap. It would break soon and, just like the end of a fever or flu, bring relief and a shaky gratitude. But the memory would remain in the bones. In the catalogue of terrible winters.
A northwest wind. It blasts through the thin woods and over the empty fields and slams against the old windows and walls of Eric Petcoff’s house. The woods were thin because the previous owner of the property, the alcoholic son of the stalwart Lauchie and Stella, had sold most of it as stumpage to various pulp contractors. Some of the hardwood had been spared, however, which was one of the reasons Eric and Jenny bought the place. Stove wood was necessary for anyone wanting to be Self-Sufficient. As was a source of clean water and a plot of cultivated land for the grazing of animals and the growing of vegetables and hay and cereal crops. And, why not, soybeans and corn. (The short growing season was why not.) Whether there was a dwelling or not had been of no consequence to Eric. He liked the idea of building his own. Their friends Karl and Denise had built a cabin with lumber Karl had milled with a chainsaw. Then they found a stash of used windows and tar-smeared sheets of Styrofoam insulation rescued from the dump (along with a perfectly good yellow and orange chesterfield).
Eric and Jenny had met the couple at the book-mobile during one of its monthly stops. Recognizing each other as kindred folk, they became friends.
Jenny thought their cabin was too small but Eric liked it.
‘People all over the world live in much smaller places. All in one room, sometimes. Why do North Americans need so much space?’
‘Well we have winter, for one thing,’ Jenny said. ‘Remember the people who had the taqueria in Mazunte? They lived in their yard. We can’t do that here.’
They had been having these discussions for months as they visited, and rejected, one property after another. One day they decided to revisit a property without the real estate agent. It was a clearing in a narrow valley beside a small deep river. No buildings. Off the grid. They walked up and down the property, imagining a house here – no, here, beside the river. A barn. A windmill. The field was small but they could clear more. Get a workhorse. Or an ox; that’s what David’s great-grandfather had used to clear his land after arriving in Canada.
The realtor had showed them the trail to the airplane that had crashed against one of the mountains at the end of the Second World War, killing the pilot and two passengers. The only access to it was through the property. They walked to the crash site and poked through the remains. It was a party place, judging from all the empties. Bummer having people traipsing through your place. Or having to put up a No Trespassing sign. Eric could tell Jenny was thinking the same thing.
They walked back to the clearing and sat on the bank of the rushing river and drank thermos tea. Then the sun dove behind the mountain – so early! – and the little valley became dour and forbidding. It was so far from town. And the road was a mess. No neighbours. (Eric didn’t really mind this but Jenny did.) And that airplane was a little creepy.
On the way back to town on the gradually widening and now sunny road they saw the old farmhouse for the first time. The place looked abandoned. There was no mailbox at the road and the driveway was a set of tracks in the long grass.
‘Let’s check it out,’ Jenny said. They left the car on the road and walked in. Around a corner the house appeared again, tall and narrow with peeling pale yellow paint. There were power poles.
‘Hydro’s good,’ Jenny said. ‘I don’t mind hydro.’
Eric had hoped to be off the grid. No mortgage, no rent, no power, no phone or water bills; that was the way to go.
‘It might not be for sale,’ he said.
‘We can find out.’
There were pastures, some growing in and one with good fences.
‘The house looks like it would need a bit of work,’ Eric said.
‘It’s a lot closer to town than the other place. If you need something you can just zip in. You could probably even bike in.’
‘That’s true.’
But zipping into town had never been in Eric’s plans. He aspired to a simple, ascetic existence. Had pictured himself in a plain, airy wooden house, a little like the Shakers but without the religion. Working on the land and in the woods. Plenty of time for reading and reflection. They’d go into tow
n for kerosene and tea. Maybe in a horse and wagon …
The nearest house was about a kilometre away. It could be seen from the road: a plain white farmhouse with black trim and three outbuildings, a large old barn, a smaller, metal-clad building and a shed. Three horses in a paddock. There was a tractor and a wagon but no vehicles in the yard.
‘Maybe no one’s home,’ Eric said.
A tall trim woman with a short grey perm came to the door. ‘Hi …,’ Jenny said with her eager trying-to-please smile. ‘We were –’
‘Come in,’ the woman said.
‘Didn’t know us from Adam,’ Jenny would tell people later, ‘and the first thing we know we’re sitting at the table drinking tea and eating a slice of homemade bread just out of the oven.’
The kitchen was large and clean. There were no knick-knacks, nothing on the windowsills and counters and the wall was bare save for a crucifix and a calendar by the phone. It smelled of roasting meat, of soapy dishwater, of the stiff line-dried clothes the woman had been folding on the table. She removed them to a plastic laundry basket and Eric noticed that one of its corners had been repaired with wire and dowelling.
‘Lauchie and Stella’s, you mean. Tsk. I’m not sure it’s for sale.’ She smiled. ‘So where are you people from?’
Toronto! Why, her brother Jimmy lived in Toronto he drove a garbage truck had been there since 1961 but she had never been to visit could they believe it she was a homebody that’s what she was yes (aspirating the word to get a breath in) how long had they been in Cape Breton why did they move here where did they live is that right had they met Colin and Mary in the brown house Mary was her cousin Florrie’s daughter had they known anyone before coming here what kind of work –
There was a noise at the kitchen door and a handsome teenager walked in. Eric recognized him from the Irving where he pumped gas. He chatted with them as he stood at the table sawing at the soft, still-warm loaf and buttered a thick crooked slice, then another.
‘Get a plate, Blaise,’ the woman said but he just slapped them together and left through a doorway.
‘How long has the house been empty?’ Eric said. Before she could resume her interrogation. In the next room, the sound of the television.
‘Only since Anggie died.’ She sighed. ‘Poor Anggie. Let me see … it must be at least ten years, no wait: twelve, it was the same year my mother passed away you’d have to talk to Abby Fraser. Why don’t I give him a call right now?’
She didn’t tell them that on a wildly beautiful spring day, of the kind that lifts hearts and gives hope, Poor Anggie had blown his brains out in the farmhouse kitchen.
Abby Fraser was one of Poor Anggie’s brothers. Eric and Jenny met him one evening in front of the bungalow he shared with his wife Marjorie, a teller at the credit union. (‘She told me there was new people in town.’) He was tall, a big-bellied man wearing wide suspenders inscribed with the word Jonsered: a logger who sold and repaired chainsaws from his garage. He hopped in the back seat of their car. Along the way he warned them that although he himself wasn’t against selling he’d have to consult his siblings ‘all in Ontario except Mary her husband’s a Mountie (they’re in B.C.) and Malkie, he’s hard to get ahold of, he’s working in a mine in Indonesia.’ A few kilometres on the gravel (the name of the road was Northfield) past Mrs. MacLeod’s house, up the short twisty driveway and they were there. Birdsong and riversong, the sun slanting gold on the fields – ‘Curly-next-door pastures some of his stock here’ – and beyond, the round protective hills of Cape Mabou. The house itself was a write-off. Inside it was dark and musty and cold, even on a summer day. Brittle linoleum curling on crooked floors. ‘There’s hardwood under there,’ Abby said. Lifting a corner: ‘Well, maybe not here.’ Peeling wallpaper and paint.
Eric looked at Jenny.
‘We’ll think about it,’ Eric said to Abby at the same time as Jenny said, ‘Could you give us a ballpark figure?’
‘Hmmm … I’ll have to talk to the others. I’ll let you know.’
They drove him home.
‘Anytime you want to see it again,’ he said as he extricated his large body from the back of their car.
‘Okay, thanks,’ Jenny said.
‘There’s just one thing,’ Abby said at Eric’s window. He leaned in, his huge hands on the car door.
‘I don’t suppose Annabel would have told you?’
Eric shrugged.
Anggie.
‘Wouldn’t want you to find out later,’ Abby said.
Two weeks went by. It was warm and sunny and they spent a lot of time at the beach, where they met a German couple who were building a house on land that they had bought sight unseen while still in Germany.
They looked at two other properties. One near the coast. Imagine. Living near the ocean. But they didn’t have enough money and they had no assets or jobs so no bank would give them a loan. And there were no fields on this property. They wanted to grow food. The second place had no fields either. It was a wooded lot in one of the Margarees, and there were so many blackflies that the realtor stayed in her car with the windows rolled up.
They were listening to a play on CBC radio one Saturday evening when there was a knock on the screen door. Abby. Eric got another chair from the living room and Jenny removed the jar of wildflowers from the tiny kitchen table.
‘Just the tea,’ Abby said when Jenny asked him if he wanted tea or coffee. They talked about the weather. ‘Hot in the woods,’ (‘wooods’) Abby said. Great for the tourists (‘torrists’) but all the wells were going dry. They talked about an accident on Route 19 – Eric and Jenny had heard the sirens but not the story – a boy had died and a girl sixteen would never walk again. ‘Happens every year,’ Abby said, shaking his head. Eric felt a mounting tension. He knew, they all knew, that Abby wasn’t there just to chit-chat.
Finally: ‘I talked to Roddie last night.’
The siblings had all been consulted and they liked the idea of a young couple farming on the property. And they had agreed on a price. It was more than Eric and Jenny had, but not unreasonable.
Walking into the musty echoing kitchen the next day, Eric wondered, What must that be like for Abby? His childhood home forever tainted by the tragedy. And the kitchen, of all places. Where the siblings had eaten and laughed and done their homework. Horsed around while they were supposed to be doing the dishes. A bedroom you could close off. But not the kitchen.
Abby left them alone and Jenny examined the walls and cupboard doors for signs of blood, or worse. There were none.
Still.
Back in the trailer they made a list of pros and cons. Then tore it up. The next afternoon Jenny said, ‘Let’s go see it again. Alone.’
It was a calm and sunny day. So peaceful here, compared to their trailer on Route 19. And so beautiful. The cold little brook. The backdrop of round wooded hills, with their dark arches of conifers. The song of birds and insects, the whisper of a breeze in the long grass.
‘Never mind the house,’ Eric said. ‘We can tear down the house. We can burn it.’ He liked that idea especially. Keep the foundation and the chimney and build up from there. Phoenix rising from the ashes. ‘Forget about the house.’
Leaving the place they saw a black pickup on the road. The driver waved, stopped the truck and got out, leaving the door open and the motor running. He was a slight but sturdy man, in his late fifties or early sixties.
‘My wife told me you were asking about the place.’ Waving in the direction of the house down the road. So he was Mrs. MacLeod’s husband.
‘I spent a lot of time here when I was a youngster,’ he said. ‘I lived with my grandparents, in the house I live in now, and it was pritty quiet over there. I came here every chance I got.’
He parked his truck beside their car and they walked in together. He showed them the location of the second barn in a far fie
ld (Abby had not mentioned it) and described the fire that had destroyed it the year he and his wife had moved in. ‘On account of the hay was too green.’ He shook his head. ‘Poor Anggie. A nicer man you’d never meet. But he was a bad alcoholic.’
‘Dandy spot for a garden.’
‘They had fifty head here once. Beef and dairy both.’
‘Ranald would go into town to sell milk with his horse and buggy.’
‘They had big-big gardens, they were famous for their potatoes. When everyone else’s had sprouted, theirs were still good and hard. Sold them to the restaurants in town for french fries.’ He opened the twin doors on a little hill against the house and showed them the famous root cellar.
‘What a nice man,’ Jenny said as they drove back to the trailer. ‘Wouldn’t he be a great neighbour?’
That night Eric called his brother Pete, a high-school art teacher in a small town in northern Manitoba, because they were short two thousand dollars.
SAUCY LITTLE CARD
A dozen wild apple trees, a patch of Japanese knotweed, a falling-down house. The fields, some growing in with wild roses and hawthorns. The desecrated forest. From which, except for the cut nails, the house had come from entire: big spruce, downed by axe and bucksaw, carted to the sawmill on horse sleighs, sliced into thick beams and wide, white boards, tall, with few knots. More trees became roof shingles. Sheaves of the supple bark of the white willow were patch-worked between the layers of planks, moss pushed into the cracks.
Lucy Cloud Page 3
